However, anyone who espouses either of those two views inevitably collides with the celebrated ḥadīth of the Bedouin. In response, the Shāfiʿīs sought to resolve the conflict by distinguishing between water that reaches impurity and impurity that reaches water. They said:
If the water is poured over the impurity—as in the Bedouin incident—the water is not defiled; but if the impurity falls into the water—as in the report of Abū Hurayrah—the water becomes impure.
The overwhelming majority of jurists retorted, “This is arbitrary.” On closer examination, however, one can detect a line of reasoning behind it. Their consensus is that a small amount of impurity does not affect a large body of water when that water is of such volume that the impurity cannot possibly permeate all of it and its very substance is dissolved in the greater mass. Granting that, it is not unreasonable to say that a given measure of water could be permeated—and therefore rendered impure—were an equal measure of impurity to be mixed with it. Accordingly, when water is applied to impurity bit by bit, the impurity’s substance is consumed before the water is exhausted. Thus the last portion of water purifies the spot, for its ratio to the impurity that remains is the same as the ratio of a large quantity of water to a small impurity. For this reason one attains certainty, in such a case, that the impurity has vanished (i.e., when the final pure portion of water falls upon the final trace of the impurity).
Hence the jurists unanimously agreed that the volume of water required for wuḍūʾ purifies a single drop of urine that lands on a garment or the body, although they disagreed when that same drop falls into that volume of water.
In my estimation, the soundest and most methodical reconciliation is to deem the ḥadīth of Abū Hurayrah and those like it to indicate disapproval (karāhiyyah), and to understand the ḥadīths of Abū Saʿīd and Anas as establishing permissibility. This interpretation leaves the texts in their apparent senses (namely, that the two reports of Abū Hurayrah speak of impurity affecting water).
The boundary of what is disliked, in my view, is whatever the soul finds repugnant and deems foul. Whatever a person would loathe to drink should be avoided in acts of devotion to God Most High, and he should likewise shun its touching the exterior of his body just as he shuns its entering his interior.
As for the argument that, were a small impurity truly to defile a small amount of water, no one could ever be purified—since, on that reasoning, the water that runs off the impure object would always remain impure—it is meaningless. We have shown that the ratio of the last portion of water that reaches the last remnant of impurity is precisely the ratio of abundant water to scant impurity. Although many later scholars find the objection impressive, we know with certainty that a large volume of water is not spoiled by a small impurity. Therefore, when the washer keeps pouring water over the contaminated area or limb, the abundance of water necessarily dissolves and nullifies the impurity. It makes no difference whether that water strikes the impurity all at once or arrives portion by portion. Those who raise this objection have taken a point of consensus and employed it—unawares—to argue a point of disagreement, though the two matters are wholly dissimilar.
Such, then, is what has become clear to us concerning the causes of differing opinions on this question and the weighting of those opinions. We would have liked to